The idea is it would have only come onto the market slowly as companies were able to progressively utilise more and more of the spectrum in various areas. Ownership hence would have been more diversified from the beginning, preventing the development of a continental monopoly capable of buying it all, similar to how no monopoly has been able to buy up all the country's land.
Agriculture is the US is incredibly subsidised, and as such things tend to benefit large incumbents the situation could be quite different if no subsidies took place.
> The idea is it would have only come onto the market slowly as companies were able to progressively utilise more and more of the spectrum in various areas. Ownership hence would have been more diversified from the beginning, preventing the development of a continental monopoly capable of buying it all, similar to how no monopoly has been able to buy up all the country's land.
But they have bought up all of the land. I mean not "all" as in 100% obviously (AT&T and Verizon don't own 100% of the spectrum either), but a small handful of large agribusiness corporations own the large majority of the farmland in the US.
And it doesn't really matter how it starts. A hundred years ago there were quite a lot of family farms that have since been subsumed into ConAgra et al.
Large corporations have economies of scale. All else equal, the rich get richer and large corporations get larger. Eventually they tend to become mismanaged and die, but not all at the same time, so their carcasses are eaten by their other large competitors, which makes them even larger.
Competition doesn't come from rational self-interest. Rational self-interest for powerful people and corporations is to get together and collude with each other. Competition comes from changing circumstances that modify who has power and create uncertainty as to who existing interests should collude with. People bet on different horses when they're not sure which is going to win. Nobody bets on the locally owned hardware store against Lowes and Home Depot.
I'm not American and not particularly familiar with the economics of the agriculture industry there, so I don't really feel qualified to comment. I'll just point out that government actions often favour such large corporations, preventing for instance the collapse of certain banks and auto manufacturers during the GFC. I do know that farm subsidies in the US are quite extensive.
If the government had decided 70 years ago that it owned all the nations farmland, and had auctioned it off to four large corporations, making it law that nobody else could own farmland, would the farmland situation would be better or worse than it is now? I'd argue for worse.
Agriculture is the US is incredibly subsidised, and as such things tend to benefit large incumbents the situation could be quite different if no subsidies took place.